Francis Ssuubi, Steve and Gina conducted family tracing in the North east and Eastern Uganda from the 18th May -23rd May 2014 .Their first stop was in Mbale, where they were able to trace one family of 6 children and their mother .The husband was arrested when she was pregnant, that is 4 years ago,at that time she had run away from him because he had threatened to kill her.She has since remarried to a man she says helps to provide for her, although she has to work to supplement the family’s income and to look after her children. She looks worn out and works hard. She has a 5 months baby child with her new husband, in Kabwangasi trading centre . She makes and sells mandazi (some kind of doughnuts )for livelihood. Her sons Abraham and Paul move around the small town of Kabwangasi selling the Mandazi.One of her daughters Robinah 6 years ,was not with her, we learnt that she was taken away by Beatrice’s sister called Florence. They are not certain whether Robinah attends school or not.Steve says, “from Mbale we started off our journey to Kotido and on our way to Kotido we found ourselves on a VERY muddy road in Sironko. We knew we had a 7 hour drive to Kotido and were praying the road was not like this the whole way.” Steve did an awesome job driving. We saw an overturned truck and many cars stuck in the mud, but finally made it to Kotido. It was like driving on safari type roads the whole way. The roads were dirty, very narrow and sometimes did not even look like a road, more like a dry river bed. The one nice thing is there was no traffic, actually there were barely any other cars on the road.

Children in Kotido-Karamoja area.Hunger, Poverty, bites hard

A mother with her children.Their father is in prison

We got to Kotido late so we went straight to the hotel and started tracing in the morning. Kotido is a large district way up in the Northeast part of Uganda next to the Kenyan border. Up there one feels like they are in a whole different country. Karamoja as a whole is very under developed, which is true, but they have come a long way in the last 20 years. Life in Kotido is hard, there is very little food and the land is very dry.

Helen a grand mother in Pallisa, she has two sons in prison and a brother in prison.

The last family we visited is in Paliisa in a village called Amotot. Here we saw a family that had three members in the same prison so we got to meet all their families living on the same plot of land.

For all the families we met in Karamoja and Soroti, children live in total deplorable conditions.

We have traced 54 children with a parent in prison in 13 families, many of them have not seen their fathers in years, others have never seen their fathers at all and others did not know that they had fathers. We have promised them that we will first get them sponsors before they can come to Wells of Hope. Francis says, “but from what I saw, majority need to come as soon as possible. I cannot speak in many details of the suffering and pain we saw there. For instance in Karomoja and in some parts of Teso, children go hungry, others have died. I saw 3 babies suckle almost empty breasts of their mothers. Along the roads that we travelled in Karamoja, people put out hands to us begging, both adults and children.We even saw some people walk nude. Others asked for empty bottles of Mineral water which they call "Dodo" because of the sound that empty bottles make.

There is a family where we met four children Sarah 16 , Beatrice 14, Christine 9, and Betty 7 . When their father was imprisoned in 2007, their mother abandoned them and went back to her parents’ home. A week later, her children trekked a distance of 31 km to find her.

Karamojong children.They were excited to see us as we traced children with a parent in prison.